Payment and settlement statistics

Average daily RTGS settlement values and volumes

*Mastercard went live in RTGS in July 2021

All values are rounded to the nearest million. 

Further CHAPS statistics Opens in a new window

Link statistics

UK Finance – card spending data

Pay.UK statistics including Bacs, CHAPS, Faster Payments and Cheque Imaging

RTGS service availability statistics

*On 24 February 2021 a technical failure occurred on the link between the Bank of England and the CREST system at the start of the operational day. An established contingency procedure was invoked, enabling the Bank to provide start of day liquidity for CREST settlement. A reconciliation break on one of the accounts led to a further delay whilst the cause was identified and resolved, at which point CREST settlement resumed. CHAPS settlement was unaffected. 

**The Faster Payments System (FPS) clearing was delayed due to a technical issue which prevented the clearing message being sent to RTGS on time. Pay.UK’s (the operator of FPS) third party technology provider fixed the issue and the clearing settled at 17:43 (38 minutes late).

***On 20 July, following a connectivity issue on a network component hosted by a third party supplier of SWIFT, an RTGS matching cycle was interrupted requiring manual intervention to re-start it. This ultimately delayed CHAPS settlement by 5 minutes.

**** The MasterCard clearing was delayed by a total of 34 minutes on 11th August due to a delayed settlement file transfer via SWIFT. They also encountered an additional 6 minute delay on 23rd August for which the root cause is being investigated. Additionally, ICS scheme clearing was delayed by 121 minutes on 19th August due to disruptions in access portal connectivity, which impacted message file submissions to them and the subsequent sending of the clearing to the BoE.

***** On 8 September, there was a delay of 45 minutes to the first Faster Payments Service (FPS) settlement cycle. This was due to a FPS participant having insufficient funds in their settlement account. On 9 September, there was a 90 minute delay to LINK settlement, which was due to a technical issue at Vocalink and meant that the settlement required manual completion.

******The Mastercard clearing was delayed by a total of 32 minutes on 26 October which was due to a technical issue at Mastercard.

Summary of RTGS daily timetable

Service disruptions

On 12 April 2021, ’non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement was unavailable for 6 minutes from 06:00 to 06:06, due to a system configuration error. Non-urgent CHAPS settlement resumed at 06:06. Settlement of urgent CHAPS payments was unaffected. All other RTGS services were unaffected.

On 22 July 2020, we undertook a contingency test with Link, requiring manual settlement of the clearing instruction. During the test there was a delay, but settlement was completed by 13.30. All other RTGS services were unaffected.

On 6 July 2020, the Bank experienced a 10 minute RTGS settlement delay. As a consequence of a SWIFT outage earlier in the day, there was an issue with our internal SWIFT infrastructure that led to a 10 minute outage of settlement while it was reset. All settlement obligations were settled during the standard settlement day, without needing an extension.

On 14 May 2020 the failure of a network component at one of SWIFT’s European processing centres meant the loss of its messaging services within that zone. As a consequence, the Bank lost connectivity to the external SWIFT messaging service that supports CHAPS. SWIFT restored services by performing a failover to their alternative processing centre, but CHAPS urgent and non-urgent settlement was not available for 28 minutes while this was completed. All settlement obligations were settled during the standard settlement day, without needing an extension. 

On 4 December 2019 at 11:00 there was an internal issue which paused RTGS settlement for 10 minutes. Settlement was restarted following internal investigations. All settlement obligations were settled during the standard settlement day, without needing an extension. CREST settlement was unaffected.

On 20 March 2019 at 15:28 there was a controlled stop of CHAPS settlement in the Real Time Gross Settlement service that resulted in transactions being suspended until 16:43 when settlement was restarted following internal investigations. All settlement obligations were settled during the standard settlement day, without needing an extension.

On 19 February 2018, CHAPS settlement was unavailable for 18 minutes from 06:00 to 06:18 due to a minor operational issue that required manual intervention.  Urgent settlement is usually available from 06:00 to 18:00, non-urgent is usually available from 06:00 to 17:30. CREST and other settlements were unaffected.

On 4 August 2017, ’non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement was unavailable for 12 minutes from 06:07 to 06:19, due to a minor issue with some of the Bank’s connections to the SWIFT network.  Non-urgent CHAPS settlement resumed at 06:19. Settlement of urgent CHAPS payments was unaffected. All other RTGS services were unaffected.

On 5 June 2017, the RTGS Enquiry Link was unavailable for external users for 61 minutes, between 05:05 and 06:06 due to a minor internal issue. CHAPS payment processing and CREST settlement were unaffected.

On 13 March 2017, infrastructure for urgent CHAPS settlement and non-urgent CHAPS settlement was unavailable from 14:30, due to a SWIFT network issue. Urgent settlement was resumed after 40 minutes at 15:10. Non-urgent settlement was resumed after 60 minutes at 15:30. All other services were unaffected.